The performance of the electric powered RC models has become truly amazing in the last couple of years with the development of good batteries and super new motors. Their performance can equal that of gas. The very powerful ones make so much prop noise, they almost sound like the quieter gas models. I was out watching a friend fly one of his planes (he has built well over 200 electric planes over the last few years!) not too long ago. When he landed it near me, I picked it up and burned my hand on the motor, it was so hot. The batteries were also too hot to touch. It was a stunning experience to see how much the technology has progressed in just a few years!

If Honda would scale up their little Mini 4-Stroke series engines (the GX series) from their current largest of 1.5hp to somewhere around 8-12hp, I believe they would be ideal powerplants (with re-drives) for our Lazairs.

hi all have just sent off a video i made last night to webmaster and hope it shows ok to put on site. i set up my old super 8 projector and put the hi 8 vid camera beside it and shot it right off the screen. the footage is from around 1981 made up from most of my footage and some that was sent over from dale at the factory. unfortunatley it is the leftovers after it had been edited here in australia, it shows peter corley flying right at the end (the beach and field shots). the edited footage is long lost shame as it showed peter pulling off 4 consective loops between 150 and 75 ft as he came to the top of the fifth he ran out of speed and did a very nice wing over. all this footage from canada was a copy that dale sent out to dealers about 200ft worth, so check with any old dealers from around that time it still maybe around and is definitley worth seaching for. the chap sitting in the lazair at the beach is a canadian expat murray strudwick who imported lazairs to australia.
the lazair in the opening is the first to come here it was very early mk1, factory fabric and cables for the ailerons it was flown without a seatbelt until murray prangged it and slashed his hand on the prop getting sepisemia out of it we rebuilt it with big wheel kit pushrods for ailerons and mylar and thru bolts for the engines we also made a 4 point harness. murray almost died from the sepo.
the stills are a mixture of aussie and factory promo slides. music is "the journey" by aussie. tommy emanuel. i showed this footage at my 'home movie show' at last years national fly in and could have sold five right there and then. the lazair was so in front of it's time it will still cause a stir in another twenty years. hope you enjoy this piece of history. i also have 150ft of aussie ultralights from around 1978 that i will edit up and if allowed will upload them as well.
CHAPPY i use a honda ei2200 inverter genset powered by 100cc 4 stroke runs real sweet have been looking at this engine for a while cheap 350 aus with a re drive would put out about the same as 185 rotax at half the weight. running under full load burns 4lts in two hours. i went to the rc jet fly in just to look best was 35lbs thrust $5000 and look just like the real thing when they crash. there is a vid on the net of a sailplane with two podded on a pylon money to burn hey. OZZIE

Great little clip Ozzie. Oh how I wish the video had just a little more clarity. Viewing this brings me back many memories of many things. I'll always be amazed at how slowly a Series I could fly in a slight headwind. Attached is a picture of Peter flying an early factory Series 2 on floats and 185s (note the D-can mufflers). That was a fun and exciting day for me ! March`82

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